That Anonymous White House 'Resistance' Insider

Voters elected Donald Trump to drop a metaphorical bomb on Washington. He’s done just that, and members of the professional political class — the establishments of both parties and the bureaucrats lurking in what has become known as the “deep state” — have no idea what to do about it. So these folks resort to dropping bombs on Trump, as if that will matter to his supporters. Such is the case with Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, and that in turn was perfectly set up by a quickly infamous and anonymous New York Times op-ed yesterday by “a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure.”

Profiles in courage right there. Or at least profiles in good marketing. Consider The Washington Post’s leaks of Woodward book excerpts and this NYT op-ed as the Leftmedia’s one-two punch on Trump, which just happened to come during the week of Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Frankly, this op-ed utterly lacks credibility until we know who wrote it. If it’s a Cabinet-level secretary, that’s one thing — and a very big problem. If it’s some third-tier staffer who doesn’t even interact with Trump but does have a Napoleon complex, well, that’s something else. We don’t doubt this person’s identity will be revealed (and we’ll bet Woodward knows who it is), but there’s at least one thing already known beyond the shadow of a doubt: Whoever this is clearly thinks a lot of himself.

The author reveals three overarching and important things. First, Trump has accomplished an awful lot. “Many of [the administration’s] policies have already made America safer and more prosperous,” he writes. Those accomplishments include “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more” — all things important to Trump’s base and all conservatives.

So why the complaints? Well, that’s the second thing. Trump is, the author alleges, driven by “misguided impulses,” “amorality,” and “not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.” We in our humble shop have written these very criticisms, but voters chose him knowing it all full well because he was precisely the man to send to drain the swamp. Again, that’s a job he’s capably doing, too.

Yet that brings about the third thing. The author confesses to working with other “adults in the room” to save Trump from himself. They allegedly remove papers from his desk, hear him give instruction and then do something else, and are secretly working “to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.” The author even speaks of “early whispers … invoking the 25th Amendment,” the process for removing a president mentally or physically unfit for office.

“This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state,” the author insists. Wrong. That’s precisely the definition of the deep state — a cabal of unelected bureaucrats, officials, and career staffers who are working to undermine the president of the United States. It’s what David Harsanyi calls “electoral sabotage.” And this pathetic op-ed is not so much “Never Trump” as “Never America.”

Finally, the good news about this post is that it puts Trump’s international adversaries on notice – both in terms of national security and trade. If the administration wanted to float a strategic warning to our adversaries, and at the same time embolden Trump’s political base, this “insider perspective” would fit that order!

"Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules." —Thomas Jefferson (1801)

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